


open up the ages

by blackkat



Series: Marvel Drabbles [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Escape, Friendship, Gen, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, general HYDRA nastiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 07:05:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19436389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: After almost a year out of the ice, the Asset is more Bucky Barnes than Winter Soldier. It's HYDRA's mistake that they stuck him in a cell between Wanda and Pietro.





	open up the ages

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: Maybe Bucky breaking his conditioning when he sees Wanda and Pietro being kept by hydra? He’s like oh my god I need to help these kids and they form a small group of vigilantes that makes shield very frustrated but amuses the avengers

“Get him secured and _fix the damned machine_! If anyone finds out about this, it’s on your head!”

Bucky’s ears are ringing, but he still has enough wherewithal to grab for the edge of the door with his mechanical arm, snatching at the stone. He’s half an instant too late, though; the HYDRA members half-dragging him hurl him forward, and there's a sparking _wrench_ in his arm that says something isn't right in the mechanisms. He hits the floor hard, rolls back to his feet just as the door slams closed, and the sound of heavy iron bolts snapping home makes him wince.

“The mission took longer than anticipated—”

“The Asset isn't to be used for more than a year without maintenance. _You_ agreed to the terms when you requested his assistance. Pierce will hear about this.”

“…Yes, sir.”

Maintenance. They're talking about the chair. Bucky closes his eyes, pressing the heel of his hand against his temple as hard as he can. He doesn’t want to go back in the chair. It’s been—months. And like white noise filtering away, things are coming back one piece at a time.

Being _Bucky_ feels like a victory. He hasn’t told his handlers, hasn’t tried to say anything that isn't an answer to a direct question, and it feels a little like thievery, a little like victory. Something stolen, secreted away, that rose in the middle of an otherwise endless night. Just a remembered voice, as if from far away, calling for someone named Bucky, and the jolt of realizing that _he_ was Bucky.

Bucky is a lot of things the Asset can't be, and Bucky has had six months already like this. He _can't_ go back on ice.

“A visitor? Did you hear, sister? We’re entertaining,” a voice says, joking, _furious_ , and Bucky raises his head, staring at the stone wall dividing his cell from the next.

“I hear you _shouting_ ,” a woman’s groggy voice says from Bucky’s other side. Young, like the man, with the same accent that something in Bucky identifies as Sokovian before he can even begin to wonder about it.

“Sorry,” the man says, more softly, and there's a rap of knuckles against stone. “Anyone we know?”

“No,” Bucky says, and the word rasps in his throat, unfamiliar. He puts a hand up to it, but it’s the metal hand, and the fingers won't close right. Grimly, he lets it drop again, and tries not to think about the maintenance that’s going to happen shortly.

There's a moment of silence, and then a breath. “Who are you?” the woman asks, slightly closer this time. “Why does HYDRA have you?”

A flicker of paranoia rises, all sharp edges that cut into Bucky’s chest. _Trap_ , he thinks, _it’s a trap_ , and he doesn’t know what for but the odds that it’s anything else are so very, very slim. He’s been—this happened before, him in a cell and men on either side, waiting for something. Waiting to die, maybe; people left and then never came back, and the only reason Bucky wasn’t one of them was—

The memory greys out, and it’s like grabbing for ash, watching it swirl away through his fingers. Bucky’s breath shudders out of his chest, and he scrambles back, putting his back to the wall and ducking his head. One eye on the door, always, but he drags his malfunctioning arm into his lap, curls himself around it, and tries not to think about the empty, open, gaping places in his head.

“The strong, silent type,” the man says, and there's a huff. “HYDRA’s favorite.”

“At least he won't have a black eye from mouthing off,” the woman retorts, though there's a thread in her voice that’s clear worry.

Apparently, the man hears it too, because his voice softens. “I'm all right, Wanda,” he says, and Wanda makes a low, angry sound. Her fist thumps lightly against the stone wall.

“We’re _not_ ,” she denies, and Bucky raises his head, just for a moment, as footsteps pass. Through the narrow window in the cell door, he watches a group of men in HYDRA’s uniform march past, pulling a young woman with them. She’s gagged, her hands bound, but her eyes are uncovered. For all the good it will do, Bucky thinks, tracking her as she passes; with the color of them and the way they flicker, never focusing on anything, he’s willing to bet she’s blind.

There's silence until the steps fade, and then a low, angry sound. “Irene,” the man says.

“She’s still alive,” Wanda says, more softly. “That’s a good thing, Pietro.”

“For how long?” Pietro retorts, and Wanda has no answer. Bucky bows his head again as the silence stretches, curling his flesh hand into a loose fist, and tries not to think about the emptiness of his memories or the looming ice he’ll go into as soon as they repair the chair.

It doesn’t leave a lot of other things to focus on, though. Bucky curls around himself, shivering in the cold, and wonders if he’s ever felt more miserable. At least when they usually put him in the chair, he’s mindless, barely remembers what it will do.

Somehow, facing it like this feels a thousand times worse.

Bucky dreams of falling, of pain, of a hard, cold landing that jars him back awake, and he surfaces from sleep with a strangled gasp, immediately rolling up to his feet. The cell hasn’t changed, still bare and cold, with only a small patch of light on the floor from the hallway.

There's no sound of movement from the cell to his right, no breathing to mark an occupant, but steps in the cell on the left pause, then still. “Are you all right?” Wanda asks, low, like she’s trying not to wake anyone.

Bucky thinks about ignoring her, but his gaze flickers towards the empty cell, then back to Wanda. She’s pacing—worried, something in him says, and he used to do that, didn’t he? Pace beside a narrow bed, watching, listening for those terrible, strained breaths to stop—

“No,” he says, ragged, and Wanda laughs, bitter and strained.

“There is no pleasant sleep here,” she says, and Bucky hears a thump. When she speaks again, her voice is closer, like she just took a seat against the wall. “You are not from Sokovia.”

“Is that where we are?” Bucky asks before he can stop himself, and takes a step closer, leaning against the stone. She’s right on the other side of the wall, close enough to touch if there wasn’t a barrier, and Bucky can't remember the last time he touched someone without the intent to kill, or was touched without the intent to hurt.

“Outside of the capital city,” Wanda says, and there's a thread of exhaustion in her voice, something that makes Bucky think of the grogginess from earlier. “HYDRA recruits from the protestors, and from the government forces.”

She’s speaking from experience, Bucky thinks. And, somehow, he suspects that HYDRA didn’t give anyone signing up the full story. “Which were you?” he asks.

Her snort is mirthless. “We were marching so the government would change,” she says, thin and tired. “All we wanted was something better. But—not like this.”

Bucky grimaces, tangling a hand in his hair and tugging. Change, and he thinks of waking up with a familiar face over him, a face he can't quite make out as he is now. Someone he knew, and there had _been_ a change, but—

The memory greys out, and this time Bucky doesn’t try to chase it.

“They took him?” he asks instead, and his eyes flicker to the empty cell.

“Testing,” Wanda says bitterly, and just for a moment, the hallway outside the cells shines red, a flickering wash like a lightning strike. Wanda's next inhale is ragged, and her voice wavers like she’s about to pass out when she says, “They’ll come for me next.”

A pattern she’s familiar with. That means she’s been here a while. Bucky grimaces, and says, “That other girl—”

Wanda is silent for a long, long minute. “They might have moved her,” she says finally. “There are other cells, and Irene survived this long.”

But they might not have, and she never came back.

“They haven’t come for you yet,” Wanda says, an abrupt change in subject that says she doesn’t want to dwell on Irene.

Bucky’s mouth tastes metallic, like blood. “They won't,” he says. “Not yet. But—when they do I won't come back as…me.’

Wanda doesn’t say anything, but the silent sympathy feels easier than any words might have. She raps her knuckles against the stone, and on a whim, Bucky knocks back, three quick taps and a slightly harder thump.

“You should sleep,” he says, and the words take even him by surprise. They're meant for Wanda, but—maybe they're meant for someone else, too. Someone small and frail, with a cough that shook his entire body, who stayed up too late listening to Bucky read…something.

Not being able to remember the magazine feels like just as much of a loss as not remembering the other man’s face, somehow.

“Not until they bring Pietro back,” Wanda says, ragged but vicious, and pushes away from the wall. Bucky listens to her get back to her feet, the sound of her steps as she starts pacing again, and closes his eyes.

“They will,” he says, and doesn’t know why. He can't be sure of that. But—maybe she needs to hear it more than he needs to speak the truth.

Wanda doesn’t answer, and the silence stretches.

The sound of a cell door creaking open comes at the same moment as there's a snarl, and Bucky is on his feet before he can even register moving. A set of guards drag a man past his window, brown hair bleached to silver, expression furious even as he staggers. “Wanda!” he shouts, and Bucky recognizes his voice. “Get your hands off of her—!”

They shove him into the cell, just as a woman with red hair is pulled past. “Pietro!” she calls, and lunges like she’s going to throw herself at him. But Pietro's legs buckle as he tries to meet her, and he’s shoved back, out of sight. The guards catch Wanda, haul her forward as she screams and fights, and it twists down through Bucky’s soul, rakes sharp claws across his brain. He twitches hard, stepping forward, but by that time they're gone, and Pietro's cell slams shut.

“Damn it,” Pietro snarls, and there's a thud like he kicked the door, then a thump of limbs hitting the ground. “Damn it,” he repeats more softly, torn and rough, and Bucky shakes himself, steps closer.

“Did you see a chair?” he asks, and it’s not just for him. If HYDRA uses it on Wanda and Pietro, if they try to make more supersoldiers—Bucky has already faced the ones in Siberia. He doesn’t want this to be the same. Doesn’t want to have to train Wanda and Pietro to become soldiers. It makes something in his chest go tight. Panic, almost, except Bucky has all but forgotten what panic is supposed to feel like.

The pause stretches so long that Bucky almost thinks Pietro isn't going to answer. Then, finally, there's a ragged laugh, and Pietro says, “I assume not the ones the scientists were sitting in.”

“No,” Bucky gets out, and it hurts. “They—it’s for wiping memories. Before cryo.”

The sound Pietro makes is horror and terror in equal measure. “Wiping _memories_?” he demands, and there’s a clatter, a thump like he staggered to his feet and caught himself on the wall. “They can—”

“It’s broken,” Bucky says. “That’s—they’re fixing it right now, but it’s not done yet.”

“Fixing it for you,” Pietro says, and he’s quick, to pick up on that.

Bucky closes his eyes. “Yeah,” he confirms, and nothing more.

A ragged breath, and Pietro laughs, nothing of humor in it. “We have to get out,” he says, and bangs a fist against the metal bars. “If they can take memories, if they can control us like that—” He cuts himself off, a low snarl that’s full of fury. “But they have Wanda now.”

Bucky doesn’t point out that they _always_ have Wanda, and Pietro too. “They're HYDRA,” he says quietly, and means _there’s no point trying to escape._

“They're the ones who changed us,” Pietro says, like a challenge. “We can get away, we can live, we’ve been living on our own since we were children. This will be nothing different.”

Bucky curls his fingers into a fist, breathes out. away from HYDRA sounds like an impossible thing, a terrifying, looming death sentence. No handlers, no chair, no missions, and Bucky hates all of those things, but he can't remember a time before them. He can't—

And then there's a cry from the other cell, a crash, another, three more in blurred succession. Bucky jerks upright, heart in his throat, adrenaline suddenly racing, and demands, “Pietro?”

Silence, and then a pained groan. “I'm all right,” Pietro pants, “I'm fine, just—cramps.”

That didn’t sound like any cramp Bucky has ever encountered, but he doesn’t press. Lays his hand against the wall, as if he can reach Pietro through it, and thinks of a boy rising with blood on his face and steel in his blue eyes, fists up even as he wavered. _I'm fine_ , he used to say, and Bucky—

 _Don’t do anything stupid before I get back_ , he said once, but he can't remember when or where he was going.

“Steve,” he says, like he’d never forgotten the name to begin with. Right there on the tip of his tongue, like he’s said it a hundred thousand times before.

“What?” Pietro asks, still breathless, and Bucky can recognize the shortness of breath that comes with pain. Recognizes it intimately, from people in pain at his hands and a frail body against his, trying to match his breaths to Bucky’s. Disjointed thoughts, and it _aches_ , the same way the port for the arm does.

He clears his throat, swallows. “You remind me of Steve,” he says, and the words feel clumsy on his tongue, too big, too rough to be the victory they are. “He always said nothing hurt, even when it did.”

“Just a little sore,” Pietro says, all bravado, and there's a low groan, a thump as he stretches out along the wall, his voice coming from just above the floor. “They have more tests coming,” he says, bitter and weary. “I can't—we have to keep going.”

 _There's no time for pain_ , Bucky translates, and sighs, silent and slow. Knocks his knuckles against the wall, three soft and one firm, and then crosses to the doorway to watch for Wanda's return.

If Bucky remembers right, it’s been almost a full year since he was last in cryo, last in the chair. He wakes feeling clearer than he has in a very long time, memories still a vague, uncertain thing but body his own, and spends the morning exercising in the narrow confines of his cell. Pietro and Wanda are both in their own cells, silent in a way that’s entirely misery, and Bucky doesn’t try to engage either of them, since they haven’t tried to engage each other. The silence is a heavy thing, but Bucky focuses on counting repetitions, on the numbers instead of the clanking of metal far away, shouted orders and raised voices.

Celebration, he thinks. The scientists are celebrating, and even the man in charge doesn’t sound as angry as he has the last few days.

When they come for him, he’s ready for it.

By the time the guards reach his cell, he’s standing in the center, at attention, and the first one recoils just a little when he opens the door. The man behind him doesn’t, though; Strucker smiles, thin and pleased, and says, “Come here.”

Obediently, Bucky steps forward, keeps his stare on the middle distance and doesn’t meet Strucker’s gaze. He can feel the sweep of it over him, assessing, but Strucker nods after a moment, turns. “You have completed your mission, Soldier,” he says over his shoulder, and the cell door swings shut behind Bucky as he steps into the hall.

There are only two guards. Bucky spins, lashing out, and the metal arm can't grip, can't touch with any sort of delicateness, but for this it’s good enough. He grabs one man by the throat, shoves him back into the wall so hard his head cracks wetly against the stone, then grabs the man’s gun from its holster and fires as he turns. The second guard drops, and Bucky halts in the middle of the hallway, staring at Strucker through his hair. Strucker looks startled, taken aback, and he opens his mouth—

Bucky shoots him before he can get so much as a word out.

Strucker has the key to the cells, too. A slim card, marked with HYDRA’s symbol, and Bucky grabs it with a grimace, heading to Pietro's cell first. When he slides the card through the reader, it clicks, and the heavy bolt turns, opens. Bucky hauls the door open, and comes face-to-face with wide dark eyes in a bruised face.

“You—” Pietro starts, and his gaze flickers to Strucker’s body, then back to Bucky.

“We’re leaving,” Bucky says, and steps back.

There's a strange shimmer to Pietro's body, a hum of power that feels like standing too close to a generator. “I—Wanda,” he says, and turns. Stumbles, then blurs forward a step, as if his body is suddenly twice as fast as it should be and he can't quite keep up.

Bucky catches him, a hand under his arm as he hauls him forward. “Wanda,” he calls through the door, and unlocks it. Instantly, Wanda shoves it open from the inside, all but tumbles out to grab for Pietro, and he abandons Bucky to sweep her into a tight, desperate hug, burying his face in her hair.

“Wanda,” he rasps, and she laughs like it’s a sob, clutching him close.

Bucky gives them ten seconds, which is nine more than they can spare. “We need to leave,” he says, and for the first time in days he pulls his mask from his belt, fits the straps over his face and picks up the bodies, shoving them into Wanda's cell and then closing and locking the door. Tips his head down the hall, gesturing them forward, and then takes up position behind them like he’s a guard.

“You want us to just _walk out_?” Pietro demands. “That will never work.”

But Wanda's eyes are sharp, her mouth set, and that same red glow Bucky saw before shimmers around her, complement to the silver and blue around Pietro. “Yes,” she says. “It will.”

The red glow of her eyes is something bright and deadly, and Bucky feels himself almost relaxing, easing. They will get out. no one is going to suspect that the Asset has turned on HYDRA, after all.

“Limp,” he tells Pietro, and glances at Wanda. “Like you're both hurt.”

Wanda's grimace says it isn’t as far from the truth as she would like, but she wraps her arm around Pietro's waist, lets him lean on her as she starts down the hall. “There's a hangar,” she says. “One level up, at the far end of the building. Can you fly a plane?”

Bucky doesn’t remember learning, but he does. “Head there,” he agrees, and takes a breath. Lets his head fall, his eyes close, and when he raises it again he’s wearing the Winter Soldier like a mask.

Wanda is still watching him, careful but canny, and when he meets her gaze, she smiles. “Thank you, Soldier,” she says, and Pietro nods, arm tightening around his sister.

Bucky pauses, looking between them, and takes a breath.

“It’s Bucky,” he says. “My name is Bucky.”


End file.
